Suspect may be part of sleeper cell

BOSTON — The FBI is investigating whether a Lebanese man who says he attended an al Qaeda training camp and was charged with lying to authorities about shipments to Afghanistan was part of an al Qaeda “sleeper cell” in the Boston area, a spokeswoman said.

Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi was charged Friday in federal court in Minnesota with two counts of making false statements to federal investigators.

Elzahabi worked as a taxi driver in Boston in 1997 and 1998.

Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, confirmed the bureau is investigating whether he belonged to a terror cell.

“During terrorism investigations we will always look for connections to all known or suspected terrorists or the events of 9/11,” she told the Boston Sunday Globe.

Last year, the FBI’s top terrorism expert in Boston, Tom Powers, said there was no indication there were any al Qaeda cells in Boston.

According to the criminal complaint in Minneapolis, where Elzahabi once lived, he operated a business in New York from 1995 through 1997 and received shipments of field radios and walkie-talkies. Field radios of the same make and model were recovered by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, the complaint said.

Elzahabi, 41, lied when he denied knowing what was in the shipments and also lied when he denied helping somebody fraudulently obtain a Massachusetts driver’s license by using Elzahabi’s address, according to federal officials.

Neither of Elzahabi’s charges was related to terrorism, but the complaint said that in the 1980s and 1990s, Elzahabi met several people who became top al Qaeda leaders. They include Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian believed to be directing attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, and Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda associate who appeared to have been an organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Elzahabi told federal officials he was a sniper in 1999 and 2000 for insurgents fighting the Russian government in Chechnya. He moved to Minneapolis in mid-August 2001.